Strategies for comprehensible input, feedback, building background, and student engagement
1:Provide multiple options for input. Give students the opportunity to discuss and participate in debates. "Provide level-appropriate reading and listening materials. Monitor the context to ensure that the input remains comprehensible while giving students enough room to explore and experiment with the language." '(fluentu.com)' 2: Use Labels and Visual Tools Label new items, pictures and tools so that students have constant reminder and reference of the new concepts and strategies that they are learning. Visual tools help students to: * Understand a complex/abstract concept or term * Sequence information with greater ease * Connect and develop personal and meaningful ideas/cues (fluentu.com) 3: Story Time Choose a story that can connect with most of the student's cultures or that closely relates to them on a personal level. Stories should also include the following requirements. * Linguistically Appropriate * Culturally Related * Socially Connected Adopt FluentU as a Teaching Tool The following was taken directly from the FluentU website. "Another great way to track down diverse input is with FluentU. '' ''FluentU has tons of real-world English videos — taken from sources ranging from “Friends” episodes and “the Hunger Games” trailers to documentaries, broadcast news and interviews. FluentU takes those real-world videos and turns them into English learning lessons. It lets students learn English using fun videos and real-world context. This might just be your new favorite tool to expose students to a wide range of English. Given the sheer diversity of content, there’s sure to be something every class will love! FluentU is ideal for finding videos for in-class exercises as well as homework. Say goodbye to spending hours searching for good videos on YouTube and hello to focusing on actually teaching your students. Plus, FluentU is dedicated to making English input comprehensible for learners. Each video comes with interactive subtitles. If a learner doesn’t quite understand something that’s said, they can simply hover their cursor over the subtitled words to see definitions and real-word usage examples appear on-screen, instantly. By clicking on a word, they’ll add it to a running vocabulary list for later practice, and they’ll see more in-context uses of the word from other FluentU videos. That’s not even the most interesting part. With FluentU’s “learn” mode, students can learn each part of the video bit by bit. FluentU delivers questions and examples that are personalized based on each student’s experience on FluentU." (Fluentu.com) 6: List Work List work provides guidance and structure on how to complete a multi-step task. Comprehensible input can be provided in this activity by planning to use and including new words, pictures, and symbols. By doing that and using a familiar strategy, students can build from their prior knowledge and grow their English language skills. 8: Play Games— try ESL Simon Says “Simon Says” is one of the fun games you can play with your ESL students. This fast-paced game not only tests attention and alertness, but also challenges your ESL students to understand the words and respond appropriately. The ESL version of Simon Says integrates the idea of comprehensible input by: * Using vocabulary that has been recently studied. * Dictating a sequence of actions for students to perform. Ex: Simon says, “Do four things: open your notebook, write two spelling words, trade your pencils and draw a smiley face on your neighbor’s notebook. * Asking students to undertake tasks that requires interaction. Ex: Simon says, “Pick a color in your head and sit next to someone who picked the same color as you.” (Fluentu.com)